An outbreak of mould prevented Cat Clyde from recording her third solo album as planned, in the Quebec cabin she shared with her partner, musician and engineer Strummer Jasson. After returning to Ontario, Clyde connected with producer Tony Berg – the co-producer of Phoebe Bridgers’ first two albums – and updated her vision for the follow-up to 2019’s Hunters Trance.
Clyde and Berg refined the material Clyde had written for her next album, before recording the whole thing over six days at Los Angeles’ Sound City Studios. The result is Clyde’s third solo LP, Down Rounder, an album rooted in the natural world and characterised by what Clyde refers to as “simple beauty.”
Cat Clyde – ‘Papa Took My Totems’
Down Rounder is the official follow-up to Hunters Trance and Clyde’s 2017 debut Ivory Castanets. In 2020, Clyde released Good Bones, a full-album acoustic redo of Hunters Trance, and in 2021 she worked with Canadian country artist Jeremie Albino on the collaborative LP Blue Blue Blue.
“I’m very proud of this record,” Clyde said of Down Rounder in a statement to Music Feeds. “I experienced a lot of growth and change during the making of this album, and in that time was able to align more deeply with myself and my art.”
For Clyde, Down Rounder is as meaningful and emotionally revealing as anything she’s released to date.
“These songs are an expression of my ideas, struggles, emotions and sensations; how I view the world and my place within and without; my relationship with the natural world and all my gifts and curses that are always shape-shifting and evolving with me,” she said.
“I look forward to continuing to create from a deeper place and showing up for myself, my life, and my creativity.”
Cat Clyde’s new album Down Rounder is out now via Second Prize Records.
Further Reading
Laura Jean: “I’m Really Interested in My Audience Coming From All Walks of Life”
Phoebe Bridgers Review – Disarming Melancholy and Gleeful Rebellion in Melbourne
City and Colour: “I Didn’t Know if I Was Going to Write Anything Ever Again”
